Controlling the skies

[bobbyboy29]

Hey guys,
Just looking for some more info on the exact mechanics of air combat. Recently i've found that aerial dominance can often be key to a swift, painless and succesful war post industrial era. The scenario which i'd like to focus on is one in which both teams have Machine guns, SAM infantry, fighters and bombers.

So far the only real thing that i've seen on the mechanics of air combat in the forums is a rather basic "send in the cheap fighters first to take the damage then use the bombers".

So here's the things i specifically want to know about:

The intercept mission: It seems that whilst running this, any aerial mission conducted by the enemy within a certain radius (3 tiles?) will lead to a dogfight between your plane and theirs with the result being that one of the two units dies and the other may take damage. As long as you have at least one intercepting fighter alive, all of their missions will result in dog fights rather than the bombing of tiles or striking of units.

Here are my questions:
1) Is what i just said correct? I just based it on what i was seeing not what I really know.
2) What kind of odds do you get? (It's pretty lame that for all other types of combat you can see your victory odds but not this one...) Is it 50-50 attacker-defender or is there a defensive advantage? (I'm also assuming that promos improve your chance of winning the dogfight)
3) I think they can intercept paradrops as well, is this correct?

OK so next comes land to air interception: So once the enemy has no planes in range, now the SAM infantries, MG's and anti taks can intercept your planes. It seems that they can only intercept 1 mission per turn (doing a seemingly random amount of damge) so if they have 3 of those units, 3 or fewer subsequent air missions would be intercepted. For this part can we assume that i'm targeting a city with 3 units in it. One has 40% chance of interceptions, one 30% and one 20%.

So...
1) Is what I have said so for correct?
2) Would it be that all air missions initially would have a 40% chance of being intercepted. Then once one got intercepted next would be 30%, then 20% the 0? Or is there a chance that any one of the units could intercept the first air mission?

And finally, strategies:

I would like something a bit more conclusive than "first fighters, then bombers". I personally have found a few things very useful:
1) Go for the oil resources first if possible:
If you can keep them from accessing oil for as long as possible you will go a long way towards controlling the skies (and land and seas for that matter )

2) If you don't have overwhelming numbers, intercept mission is best:
Because it is defensive in nature, when intercepting, your planes can take out more than one enemy unit, whereas whilst attacking you can take out one at most. So if you have four planes, and they have four planes, there's no point running missions, none of them will be succesful, by defending you're more likely to bring down their numbers. The intercept mission is also a great way to cover your stacks as they move through their territory. Also, you can intercept over their turn, then attack in yours, but you can't do it the other way round.

3) Bombers rule! :
They can take down cultural defenses quickly before your stack reaches a city. And if there's no one left to intercept, they're like untouchable artillery when air striking. If they get through you can easily take a city with 0 losses.

Sorry for the massive wall of text guys. As you can see, I find air combat pretty interesting but it's just really unclear to me just exactly how it works!

Any input is greatly appreciated, feel free to add your own strategies or just anser specific questions that you know the answer to.

Thanks!

 

[Wacky_Warrior]

I love the air units as well (maybe my years in the Air Force had something to do with that). I too would like to see a discussion of how people use them.

I've found that any air power (even airships) are really helpful on defence. You have much better visibility towards the enemy's movements and you can damage his attacking force without risk until he gets intercept capabilities (mobile SAM, machine guns, etc). You won't destroy them this way, but I'd rather face pre-wounded attackers when I can.

Also, don't forget airships are the only ones that can see submarines. It's almost always worthwhile to keep a few around for that in the later game. The level of micromanagement is a bit high, but worth it.

I don't have much to add for the later units (fighters and bombers). I attack targets that make sense at the time (cities or units) with them. I've read in a few places that with bombers you no longer need artillery, but I'm not convinced of that.

 

[UncleJJ]

Here is an old article that explains most of your questions about the mechanics of air combat and particulary interceptions:


Air Combat in BtS explained

It is an excellent article and has input from DanF5771 who has inspected some of the relevant code.

Concerning tactics:
Bombers are very cost effective when the enemy has little air defence but are very weak if the enemy has fighters on intercept. Then Bombers do not rule

I find that when the enemy has massed fighters the only solution is to have more fighters and better promoted fighters and to mass them more effectively. On most maps the easiest way to mass large numbers of fighters is by using carriers. That allows an unlimited number of fighters to attack any tile within a range of 6 from the sea. The carrier's ability to move, launch an attack and move again make up for the restrictions of the fighters short range and the limitation of 4 aircraft per city or fort (plus 4 for an airport).

Typically I find that an enemy city with an airport and 8 fighters can be neutralised by 3 carriers and 9 fighters, and then extra carriers and fighters do damage to the ground targets and provide air cover with interception missions. To gain air superiority often takes 2 or 3 turns and I usually have several spare fighters to replace losses and damaged fighters. Once local air superiority is gained over the tile then bombers can be used.

If the enemy is using a lot of fighters I find a balanced air force would be something like: 50 fighters, 10 carriers, 10 bombers, 8 airships (recce). An airforce that powerful, is very expensive to build and maintain but can overwhelm just about any air defence in 1 turn, bombard city defences to zero and reduce the defensive troops to 50% strength.

 

[Centimus]

The intercept mission: It seems that whilst running this, any aerial mission conducted by the enemy within a certain radius (3 tiles?) will lead to a dogfight between your plane and theirs with the result being that one of the two units dies and the other may take damage. As long as you have at least one intercepting fighter alive, all of their missions will result in dog fights rather than the bombing of tiles or striking of units.

Often, but not always. While jet fighters do have a 100% interception prob, the attacking jet fighter gets a 25% evasion prob (50% with the Ace promotion).

I'm not sure about their range, but it seems to be at least one tile in every direction.

Attacks which come down to dogfights never damage ground units / city defense.


I use jet fighters almost exclusively, mainly because of their flexibility. Even when I'm on a Pangea map, I use a lot of sea-based air-support in modern wars. It's perfect for softening up enemy ground units, monitoring their movements, bombarding improvements, etc. Lost fighters are much easier to replace (in enemy territory) than other units, as new fighters can be re-based from anywhere in the world.

The value of air-support is underrated if you ask me. If there's one unit I just can't get enough of, it's the jet fighter. I once sent no less than 594 jet fighters into enemy territory...

 

[UncleJJ]

The value of air-support is underrated if you ask me. If there's one unit I just can't get enough of, it's the jet fighter. I once sent no less than 594 jet fighters into enemy territory...

Is that a typo? Where could you even base 594 jet fighters? Maybe that's an old version of the game before cities were limited to basing 4 aircraft.

Jet fighters are great but fighters are available much earlier (50 turns or more) and do the same job against the weaker opposition they face. By the time I get jet fighters my games are usually in the mop up stage.

I agree that air-support is underrated by many. A beeline to Flight is one of my favourite end game strategies, even if I'm behind technologically, and massed fighters on carriers are will support an army of draft riflemen, machine guns and artillery against even superior troops (infantry, tanks and marines). It's the fighters that provide the force multiplier and reduce the opposition before the ground troops go in.

 

[Centimus]

Is that a typo? Where could you even base 594 jet fighters? Maybe that's an old version of the game before cities were limited to basing 4 aircraft.

No typo, I just used a bunch of carriers. I sent all my forces to the last rival continent in a conquest game I'd been dragging out until I became über-strong. Of course, building such a massive air-force would usually be a waste, but for games that go on well into the modern era, I rarely end up building less than 200 fighters (standard map).

 

[bobbyboy29]

Thanks for all the responses everyone. Especially the living civilopedia that is UncleJJ.
I just had another weird thought which may not ever actually happen or be possible but just say the enemy has just relocated some air units to a fort so they're not yet running the intercept mission, can you air bomb and destroy the fort? If so will the planes be destroyed or transported to the nearest friendly city?

 

[Centimus]

I just had another weird thought which may not ever actually happen or be possible but just say the enemy has just relocated some air units to a fort so they're not yet running the intercept mission, can you air bomb and destroy the fort? If so will the planes be destroyed or transported to the nearest friendly city?

If you bombard and destroy a fort, any aircraft based in it are simply re-based to a nearby fort or city. As I'm sure you've learned, forts are pretty hard to destroy from the air - I guess it takes 4-5 attempts on average for an unprotected fort. One can of course attempt to bombard any fort, no matter how well-protected, but that would of course be even more difficult.

If a ground unit attacks an enemy fort that contains air units but no ground units, the planes are automatically destroyed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Fighters + carriers has endgame power, it just overwhelms things and completely hoses AI naval power as long as you are diligent about scouting so you don't get surprised and insta-gibbed by opposing battleship collateral.

BTS AI does not seem very impressive with air power. I can frequently use just bombers at tech parity, and they simply don't have enough (sometimes any, sometime just like 4-8) fighters to answer. Of course that's always something to scout ahead. The 3 most powerful attacks in industrialism times are tanks + bomber, marines + massed fighters on carriers, and nukes + anything mobile. Those 3 things are so strong and gobble land so quickly that they usually result in game over on the spot.

 

[mirthadir]

Fighters + carriers also can lose to ICBMs in port; but then so does anything you need to stack in a city. Stealth can also be problematic if the AI has a ton of bombers to insta-upgrade (this has only ever thwacked me for a loss on deity, lost my navy to a stack of lousy transports).

Oil denial is a classic, but don't underestimate burning the Al mines if the tech gets high enough. Jets vs fighters or stealth bombers vs bombers is pretty huge.

Another extremely good option is to start an AI-AI war first. You can either make sure your "ally" has fighters of his own and burn through the target's airforce, or you can gift them. You can sometimes gimmick a come from behind airpower push by gifting mass, high promo, airships and watch a bunch of cheap, shiny new planes go wipe out most of the target's airforce.

Interception is only better if you believe you will get an acceptable loss rate. For instance if the AI can outbuild you 2:1 you will kill the first plane 50% of the time with even odds and almost certainly die on the second. If you start 4 : 2 in initial strength and the AI outbuilds 2:1 one, you will dig a hole that is increasingly hard to come out. On the flip side, if you do missions, even garbage missions, you still win 50% of the time, but you don't engage with an almost dead plane. Setting up a two cycle system of attack this turn (down an enemy and take damage), rebase the next you can start racking up wins. Once you get a promo advantage you can then go on intercept and slowly achieve air supremacy even without an air production advantage.

 

[UncleJJ]

An interesting post mirthadir

Even if you don't have a a production advantage and can't shoot down the enemy fighters better than a 50-50 ratio it can still be very favourable to the human player who has the initiative. As you say it is a selection process. Allow me to explain at length for those who might not understand what is happening here, I'm sure you already understand this

Take a simplified case where 8 fighters are defending a city and I have 6 carriers with 18 fighters ready to attack it. Assume all the fighters have the same promotions, so each initial air combat between a pair has a 50% chance of victory, and 1 fighter will die and the survivor will either be unharmed (33% chance) or be at 50% strength (67%). On average the first 8 combats will result in 4 victories and 4 losses for me and will leave (say) 1 full strength and 3 half strength defending fighters. My ninth attacker will be intercepted by the full strength defender that has already won an air battle (but since this is all happening in the same turn he doesn't get a promotion yet). That battle is a straight 50% I win, 17% he wins unharmed, 33% he wins and is half strength. Eventually he will be killed or reduced to half strength.

Half strength fighters have a 50% chance of intercepting and so half my attacks will go through and the other half will get intercepted. But a half strength defending fighter against my full strength attacker has very poor odds and will be killed at least 90% of the time. So depending on how many of the unlucky defending half strength fighters make the intercept with my remaining attackers, that is the number destroyed, except for the odd fluke result.

It is highly likely that 6 carriers full of fighters will completely destroy the 8 defending fighters or only leave 1 half strength one. They will suffer an average of 4 losses and 4 badly damaged fighters plus maybe some light damage. There will about 13 interceptions and so 5 air attacks will get through and damage whatever was targeted. My 4 to 8 damaged fighters will gain experience and can be sent home to heal. This is why I advocate having about 5 fighters per carrier so replacements can be flown in and spend time healing.

So it is clear from the above just so story that concentrating enough airpower to completely overwhelm the defence means that attacker will only suffer about half the losses of an equally competant defender. This is because the defenders who were lucky enough to win their first round combats are destroyed in following ones and so seldom get to benefit.

The SAS raid:
Here is another tactic I am ready to use to gain air superiority. It is inspired by the SAS (Special Air Service) who started as a covert force to attack German airfields in WW2. I look carefully at where the AI has put its fighters and how well defended those cities or forts are. Quite often they will have 8 fighters in a coastal city with only 3 infantry defending. I attack that city with ground forces.

Rather than send in my own carriers brimming with fighters and have an almighty air battle while I reduce the infantry and then assault the city, I avoid the enemy fighters. Instead I resort to guided missiles (3 per submarine) to damage the infantry defenders. It takes about 3 missiles to damage an infantry enough that an attack from a transport will win easily. Destroyers reduce the defences before the missiles are sent in and then attackers follow in. As soon as the last defender is killed the city is captured and all enemy aircraft (fighters, bombers, jets, stealth bombers) are destroyed. If you have marines or the amphibious promotion then less guided missiles are needed before the attack has a good chance.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Under what circumstances would you give a fighter the Ace promotion? I like to send in my fighters as Uncle JJ suggested (thanks for the excellent explanation) to damage and shoot down defending fighters on intercept. I want my fighters to be intercepted so any bombers I have don't face the fighters (or my fighters on the next turn are unoppossed). Am I missing something?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I pretty much never give them ace...straight combat win odds are better on fighters IMO. Bombers...maybe? I don't see a lot of that though, it seems better to just give them fighter support if using them at all.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I pretty much never give them ace...straight combat win odds are better on fighters IMO. Bombers...maybe? I don't see a lot of that though, it seems better to just give them fighter support if using them at all.

Thanks. That's what I do. Ace seems to be worse than useless. I don't want my fighters avoiding interception.

 

[mirthadir]

ace is useful for resource denial missions or something else key when the AI has spammed mass mech inf. I mostly have used it on jets and stealth bombers (these guys can rack up XP pretty nicely vs normal fighters if the AI lacks Al).

UJJ: Even without local numerical superiority you can sometimes eventually eke out a win if you can get promo superiority. CIII or higher fighters can work wonders against CI or CII fighters, as long as they survive to keep getting promoted.

Also, I haven't used the cruise missile side of things a lot, when are they more cost effective than marines? Raiding a non-cap city with marines is fairly viable, pinch/C/D can make them reasonably cost efficient cannon fodder, but this just may reflect my tendency to skip out on rocketry (or even artillery) in a lot out air power pushes (normally I prefer tanks and paras to follow my air)

 

[capnvonbaron]

Cruise missiles are beautiful for softening up defenders before a naval invasion. They are cheap and can be built in lesser production cities (sans barracks or settled GGs) in droves. Slap them in subs or missile cruisers and send them out with a naval invasion force. They don't get intercepted and enough of them can do a ton of damage. As JJ said, find the weak city, bombard the defenses down with warships first, let loose the CMs, and walk on in.

 

[UncleJJ]

capnvonbaron is right. Cruise missiles are great for softening up tough targets, without being intercepted and also they can damage the target below the 50% cut off aircraft have for direct damage and bomber collateral damage. They can be used after fighters and bombers have damaged the stack to further damage a top defender that is still too tough (e.g. CG3 infantry on hill). I occassionally use them for that purpose. As capnvonbaron says GMs can be built in any city including low production ones and allow new cities to contribute to the attack.

But I am advocating using them to support a naval raid when the enemy has strong air cover. The SAS sneak attack is used to gain air superiority, locally at least. So if my best attacking troops are rifles/grenadiers and cavalry and they are unlikely to have amphibious (hence my comment about marines) and GMs leverage them into the city. Attacking from a ship with a rifle, or better still a cavalry, against an infantry is no joke even if it is reduced to half strength. If that half strength infantry is CG3 and on a hill then it is even more challenging. That's where the flexilbility of GMs comes in, you just use another one to bring the top defender lower in strength and HPs. Eventually, with enough GMs, you can take the city with any troops and that destroys all the aircraft.

The way I often research things means I have Flight long before Assembly Line (sometimes I don't research it at all) and then pursue Artillery, Rocketry and Radio (giving me bombers, subs and GMs). From there I often continue to avoid Assembly line and research Advanced Flight to upgrade my cavalry to gunships (although no jets as I need aluminium). This research path works especially well on a map with a lot of water and if you have GLH as you can avoid Economics for a very long time and that makes economic sense . Infantry don't add anything comparable to huge mobility from concentrating on railroads (MGs) , oil based ships (destroyers) and airports (carriers + fighters). The only thing I miss out on that would add significantly is the paratrooper from Fascism but I get early gunships in compensation and with air support they're tough to beat. On a side note, this tech path is also en route to Fission, so if an AI builds the Manhattan project I merely need to steal Fission and have nuclear parity. I also have the submarine fleet (and supporting vessels) ready to make effective use of tactical nukes.